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British Researcher Links Japanese and Foreign Businesses Supports Charity...

Ever wanted to make money and do good at the same time Well an expert British scientist living in Japan things he has the answer and its all thanks to the unique idea of a British student and his ground-breaking web page.

   
   


The idea first came to Jonathan Heddle when he heard about the homepage of Alex Tew; 's8220;The Million Dollar Homepage's8221;. It was a novel idea; a simple page that sold parts of itself (divided into pixels) at a flat fee for anyone to use to advertise their own websites or businesses. It seemed like an idea doomed to failure but it took off and Alex's8217;s page generated huge amounts of internet traffic and soon sold all one million of its pixels (at one dollar a time).



Jonathan decided to take the idea and extend it. But there were problems to overcome. Foremost was the fact that almost immediately after the success of The Million Dollar Homepage a lot of copycat sites sprang up. Very few of them did well because they simply imitated the original and succeeded only in diluting its effect. There was also the question of what to do with the money earned: 's8220;I felt uneasy about the idea of making so much money from a webpage without giving something back,'s8221; explains Jonathan, 's8220;In addition, I wanted to make something that exploited my unique abilities, something that no one would be able to copy. 's8220;



Indeed, it was Jonathan's8217;s knowledge of Japanese language and culture applied to the goal of encouraging business to flow between Japan and the outside world that was to become the unique focus of Jonathan's8217;s web page, BreakintoJapan.com. 's8220;The majority of the pixel-ad sites were in English and targeting English-speaking traffic to English speaking websites,'s8221; he explains, 's8220;There were even a few Japanese copycat sites doing the same in the Japanese language. But there was no crossover between the two. Japan is a notoriously closed market not least because of the language barrier. I realised how useful it would be to have a bilingual ad site.'s8221;



And so, BreakintoJapan.com and the Japanese language version (chari-ad.com) were born. The concept is very simple. A prospective advertiser specifies where on the site they would like to place the ad. They pay for the pixels in a couple of mouse-clicks and send their image for the advert to the webmaster. Within a day or two the ad appears on both English and Japanese sites. The description of the ad will appear in both Japanese and English languages, opening up the advertised page to previously inaccessible markets. 's8220;In addition's8221; says Jonathan 's8220;non-Japanese advertisers can specify if they are looking for a partner company in Japan and vice-versa, we will keep this information on a database and will match two advertisers whose interests compliment each other, putting them in touch.



The final unique part of the site was the fact that half of all the money generated by the page will go to charities, in this case The Red Cross and The Japanese Foundation For Cancer Research. 's8220;I just felt that it didn's8217;t seem right to keep all the money. This way everyone, including the advertisers, can rest easy knowing that they have done a little to make the world a better place and hopefully save some lives.'s8221; says Jonathan.



Who does he expect to advertise on his site 's8220;Anyone who wants more people to visit their websites, and want to tap previously impenetrable markets,'s8221; says Jonathan. Japan is the second largest economy in the world with an extremely large and wealthy middle class. Recently the economy has begun to show signs of a strong and prolonged recovery: After a decade of stagnation consumers are spending again. Potential customers for BreakintoJapan.com will range from individuals who just want to get more people reading their blogs to companies wanting to attract a new source of clients to online retailers looking for new customers, to foreign universities wanting to tap a new stream of potential students. The list is almost endless.

   


About Jonathan Heddle:

Jonathan was born and brought up in County Durham, England (a place which he still regards as home). He studied pharmacy at Nottingham University before moving on to do a PhD in biochemistry at the University of Leicester. He did a short period of postdoctoral research at the John Innes Centre in Norwich before moving to Yokohama as a Special Research Fellow of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science. He is now a Research Scientist funded by JST (Japan Science and Technology) and has his own small group of researchers at Yokohama City University. He is researching in the area of structural biology and bionanotechnology.

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